Minority Stress Counseling for LGBTQ+ Individuals

Minority Stress

Minority Stress, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer+ (LGBTQ+) individuals experience a breadth of mental health disparities. Reducing these disparities is an area of key psychological research. Minority stress is theorized to be an underlying source of the disparities (Meyer, 2003). Minority stress can be conceptualized as the internalized stigma that results from experiences of social marginalization. By reducing minority stress, it is hypothesized that generalized mental illness indicators might be reduced and indicators of wellbeing increased.

Adult participants will respond to advertisements by emailing a research assistant. A research assistant will then arrange for a pre-screening interview to ensure inclusion criteria are met. A research assistant will review informed consent and receive a signed informed consent during the pre-screening. Participants who are accepted into the study will then be offered up to 12 sessions of ACT or receive an unstructured treatment as usual counseling condition delivered by graduate students in the UAB medical/clinical psychology program under the supervision of Dr. Borgogna. These sessions will be 45 minutes each and delivered in Dr. Borgogna's lab. During the first sessions a survey battery will be administered on a lab secure computer administered via Qualtrics. It will be re-administered at session six, and during the last session. The survey will include a broad base of demographic, mental health, and minority stress measures. Participants will be assigned a random number that will link their survey responses across sessions. Identifying information will not be gathered as part of data collection.

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United States